Black-footed albatrosses (Phoebastria nigripes) spend most of their lives at sea, so when a couple reunites near their nest they like to strengthen their pair bond with a dance.
Great horned owl on nest in Schenley Park, 1 Feb 2025 (digiscoped photo by Kate St. John)
11 February 2025
Remember this great horned owl nesting in Schenley Park? According to eBirder Andy Georgeson, she’s been incubating since at least 8 January.
[Great horned owl] continuing – I have now observed this owl on the old red tail hawk nest for the last 3 weeks. … This morning the owl was mobbed by 2 Ravens and displayed a defensive posture while in the nest before the Ravens flew off.
Last Sunday, 9 February, Dana Nesiti saw movement under her breast feathers and patiently waited until her owlet appeared. Can you see its little gray beak poking out under her white collar?
Great horned owl with chick, Schenley Park, 9 Feb 2025 (photo by Dana Nesiti)
Incubation for great-horned owls (Bubo virginianus) lasts 30-37 days, averaging 33 days. If this owlet hatched on Saturday 8 February, its egg was laid around 6 January. Andy Georgeson’s observation supports this timing, too.
Great horned owlets are in their nestling phase for 42 days. This one will probably walk off the nest (called “branching”) on or around 22 March.
We’re going to have 6 weeks of Superb Owlet(s)!
UPDATE at noon on 11 February: Charity Kheshgi and I visited Schenley Park this morning to see the owls, best viewed in the vicinity of the stone bench here. I was lucky to digiscope a photo of the chick.
Great horned owl with sleeping owlet (center of photo) and stored food (on left side of nest), Schenley Park, 11 Feb 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
The owlet is the white fluff closest to his mother in the center of the photo. The other white stuff is the remains of a rabbit on top of the twigs at the left.
If you can’t discern the owlet above, here’s the same photo flipped so that the chick’s sleeping face is in the normal upright position. Ignore everything in this marked up photo except the area inside the yellow circle. Notice that the owlet’s white head, dark eye (closed), and beak are peeking out to the right of the nest twigs.
Marked up photo of owlet in great horned owl’s nest, 11 Feb 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
In early February, southwestern Pennsylvania’s resident peregrines are courting and making sure their territories are secure. Meanwhile, adults without a nest site — called “floaters” — are searching for a completely new site, or exploring the existing territories to find a weak resident who cannot keep them out. Sometimes there’s a changeover of who owns what. It’s an exciting time to watch peregrines that lasts through March.
This week the same resident peregrines courted on camera at the Cathedral of Learning while it appears there’s been a changeover at the Tarentum Bridge.
Cathedral of Learning, Univ of Pittsburgh: At Pitt, Ecco is often seen on the falconcam, preening on the green perch while he waits for Carla to show up. Yesterday she was off camera when Ecco began to “echup” and bow. Then she jumped in.
The resident pair at the Tarentum Bridge, a female with a dotted chest and a banded male (black/green 48/BR, hatched in 2014), have been quite successful since they first became a couple in 2018. Over the years they’ve fledged 20 young and have often been the first to nest. Last year she laid eggs in late February.
This year Dave Brooke discovered they aren’t the same couple. In photographs the female looks the same…
Female on the nav light beam where she likes to mate, Tarentum Bridge, 4 Feb 2025 (photo by Dave Brooke)
… but the male is unbanded so he has to be new. This is not surprising since 48/BR would be eleven years old, an age when younger males step in.
Unbanded male at the Tarentum Bridge, 5 Feb 2025 (photo by Dave Brooke)
This new couple is not on the early nesting schedule like the old pair. The female wants to mate now but he’s not in the mood. Yesterday she was calling to him from the nestbox.
Female at the nestbox, Tarentum Bridge, 7 Feb 2025 (photo by Dave Brooke)
But he ignored her.
The Tarentum Bridge female with spotted throat was sitting on the nest box and male was on the opposite end of the pier. She was wailing for some time before flying out and around the closer pier before disappearing on the Westmoreland side of the river.
Immature herring gull on ice shouts at his friends, Duck Hollow, 28 Jan 2025 (photo by Charity Kheshgi)
3 February 2025
In the past week I’ve been lucky to see gulls on ice, an owl on the nest, and three Bonus Birds.
Tiny icebergs were floating down the Monongahela River when Charity Kheshgi and I visited Duck Hollow on 28 January.
Ring-billed gulls on ice at Duck Hollow, 28 Jan 2025 (photo by Charity Kheshgi)
Ring-billed gulls outnumbered every other species. A few immature herring gulls made a ruckus in the middle of the river. And a Bonus Bird: A peregrine falcon flew over. I wonder who it is!
Peregrine falcon flyover, Duck Hollow, 28 Jan 2025 (photo by Charity Kheshgi)
On 1 February I visited Schenley golf course to take a photo of my shadow and decided to drive down Circuit Road on the way home. The sun was so bright that it illuminated the great horned owl’s nest under the Panther Hollow Bridge. From the road I digiscoped a photo of the female and cropped it for a closer look.
Digiscoped photo of nesting great horned owl at Schenley, 1 Feb 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)Heavily cropped digiscoped photo of nesting great horned owl, 1 Feb 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
Yesterday I went back with Charity Kheshgi to see the owls. The captions on her video and photos tell the story.
video of great horned owl on nest, Schenley, 2 Feb 2025, by Charity Kheshgi
We were able to see both the male on the left and the female on the nest from a trail on the same level as the nest (the “Lower Trail”).
Great horned owl pair male roosting (left), female on nest, 2 Feb 2025 (photo by Charity Kheshgi)
Below the bridge we couldn’t see the nest but the male was visible, roosting in the shadows.
Great horned owl male roosting near his mate, 2 Feb 2025 (photo by Charity Kheshgi)
And later, two Bonus Birds: A golden-crowned kinglet who flashed his crown, yellow and red …
Golden-crowned kinglet, Schenley Park, 2 Feb 2025 (photo by Charity Kheshgi)
… and a brown creeper
Brown creeper, Schenley Park, 2 Feb 2025 (photo by Charity Kheshgi)
For the next six weeks we’ll see the resident peregrine falcon pair courting at the nest: Ecco (male, unbanded) and Carla (female, banded Black/Blue S/07). These two have been a couple ever since Ecco’s former mate, Morela, died in mid-May 2023. Carla arrived that month but it was too late to begin a nest so they waited until the next season. Last spring they raised two young.
If Carla follows the same schedule as 2024 she’ll lay her first egg in mid-March, the eggs will hatch in late April, and the young will fledge around 1 June.
This week when the stream was in test mode it captured Ecco and Carla bowing at the nest. Watch as they strengthen their pair bond last Tuesday. (NOTE: Male peregrines are 1/3 smaller than females. The biggest bird is female.)
Great horned owl on nest, Merritt Island, Florida, January 2011 (photo by Chuck Tague)
30 January 2025
Great horned owls (Bubo virginianus) are the first birds to nest in Pennsylvania each year(*). They start courting in late fall and become really intense in December when you often hear them hooting in the woods and suburbs. By January or February they’ve chosen a nest site and the female lays her eggs.
Since great horned owls never build a nest they often take over an old red-tailed hawk nest and that’s what they did at this bridge in Oakland. Ankur and Wenting saw the pair last Sunday 26 January.
The female owl is the only one who incubates, so she’s on the nest in the photo. Look closely behind and above her and you will see her mate perched on a horizontal girder. He feeds her at night and roosts near her during the day.
According to eBirder Andy Georgeson, this female has been on the nest since around 8 January:
[Great horned owl] continuing – I have now observed this owl on the old red tail hawk nest for the last 3 weeks. … This morning the owl was mobbed by 2 Ravens and displayed a defensive posture while in the nest before the Ravens flew off.
Look at old red-tailed hawk nests near you for some ear tufts sticking up. If you see them, don’t get too close! You don’t want to tangle with Mama owl!
Great horned owl on nest in March 2020 (photo by Steve Gosser)
p.s. The nest pictured at top is an old osprey nest in Florida, claimed by a great horned owl.
(*)First to nest: Pigeons nest all year long in Pennsylvania. They never have an off season.
Sewickley Bridge and icy Ohio River, 25 Jan 2025 (photo by Jeff Cieslak)
26 January 2025
Since 2021 a pair of peregrines has claimed the Sewickley Bridge as their territory but there’s never been a successful nest. Jeff Cieslak photographs the peregrines at this site and confirmed last April that the male was banded (black/green 05/S) and hatched at Pitt in 2010.
When the nest failed again in 2024 and Jeff heard that PennDOT was going to repair the bridge, he contacted the PA Game Commission and PennDOT to see if they’d put up a nestbox. And they did!
“BIG NEWS: I can’t take any credit for constructing or installing it, but I will take 100% of the credit for making it happen at all: PennDOT installed a falcon nest box on the southern pier of the Sewickley Bridge. The pair nesting there for the past several years have not been able to raise any young, due to a dearth of good nesting sites. But they try every year, so when PennDOT announced that they were closing the bridge last April to do some expansion joint work, I contacted them to let them know that it seemed that there was an active nesting attempt going on (though I was pretty sure it would fail). At the end of a meeting with PennDOT, the PA Game Commission, and myself, PennDOT agreed to install a nest box under the PAGC’s direction. Apparently, they installed it in the fall — but I just found out about it last week and went to see it today.
“Nesting season will start in earnest around the beginning of March, but they might start checking the box out sooner. It would have been great to see one hanging out in the vicinity of the box today, but the falcons weren’t around this morning.
“Construction photos from PennDOT.”
— Jeff Cieslak, Our Daily Bird on Facebook, 12 January 2025
Early this month Mark Young at PennDOT sent Jeff these photos which were taken during the installation on 1 November 2024.
Peregrine nestbox before installation on Sewickley Bridge, 1 Nov 2024 (photo from Mark Young, PennDOT District 11)Peregrine nestbox installed at Sewickley Bridge, 1 Nov 2024 (photo from Mark Young, PennDOT District 11)
Jeff checked it out on Saturday 11 January and sent me this map of the best place to view the nestbox area.
General location of Sewickley Bridge nestbox and best location for viewing it (Google Maps screenshot markup from Jeff Cieslak)
… and this is what you can see though binoculars or a zoom lens.
Peregrine nestbox at Sewickley Bridge, 11 Jan 2025 (photo by Jeff Cieslak)
Peregrine nesting season is heating up. Stay tuned or visit the site yourself to see what’s up.
From 2013 through 2023 a male bald eagle, nicknamed ‘Dad’ by his fans, nested at Pittsburgh’s Hays site. Here he is adding sticks to the nest in November 2018.
Sadly ‘Dad’ disappeared from his territory in September 2023 and many feared he was dead. A new male, HM2, mated with the original female in 2024 and she laid one egg but the nest failed when the egg deteriorated and collapsed.
Then on a gray and rainy morning, Saturday 18 January, Dana Nesiti (Eagles of Hays PA) was taking photographs at the Hays nest viewing site when an adult eagle came in, perched, and flew. Dana’s in-flight photos show that this bird has ‘Dad’s unique traits: a wing gap and a stubby talon.
It didn’t take long to spread the happy news. ‘Dad’ eagle is back!
With Dad’s return hope is renewed for a successful nesting season even though it’s already late January. As Merry Wander commented on Facebook:
…and Dad only needs 4 days to whip this place into shape…
Woo hoo!
p.s. If you aren’t on Facebook you won’t be able to see Dana’s entire Facebook message. I’ve quoted it below.
“1-18-2025 Got to the trail while it was still dark and was able to see a eagle in the cam tree with binoculars. While I was watching that eagle it flew out at 7:22am and circled the river a couple times before flying downstream. It appeared to be a sub adult. I continued down the trail to the nest area and took my pack off and was going to get set up. Another eagle was flying down the hillside which looked like a sub adult and it had a adult eagle chasing it. They did some maneuvers and also flew downstream. It was still dark and my camera was in my backpack.
“At 9:20am a eagle came over the hill and landed in the slanty tree area and sat for a few minutes. When it flew we were shocked. This eagle appears to be the original Hays male “dad”. I’m 99.999% sure it is. What do you think?
“EDIT: Looking at other images from the flight of the hill, we can see the top wonky feather and his stubby talon. I’m saying 100% the original male!!
“There have not been any signs of nest building that we are aware of and the past week there have been several different sub adult eagles hanging around. Sorry for the bad quality pics as the sky was drab and rainy.“
Ecco sitting in a snow shower, 21 Dec 2024 (photo from the National Aviary snapshot camera at Univ of Pittsburgh)
14 January 2025
The peregrine falcons at the Cathedral of Learning, Ecco and Carla, are already thinking about the upcoming nesting season. Two months from now Carla will be only days away from her first egg so the peregrines are ramping up courtship this month, snow or no.
There’s been snow on the nest since 2 January but that hasn’t stopped their visits. Yesterday the temperature nudged above freezing for most of the day and shrank the snow cover. At 4pm Ecco and Carla stopped by for a courtship bowing session.
Though my Last Bird of 2024 and my First Bird of 2025 were the same species — a flock of crows flying to/ from the Oakland roost — my Favorite Bird started off the new year right.
As the breeding season heats up in January and February, Ecco and Carla will become more visible even though it’s cold. Watch for them in the sky around the Cathedral of Learning this month and on camera beginning in February.
Meanwhile, click here to see the current snapshots from the nest.
